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New submitter SomeoneFromBelgium (3420851) writes According to Bloomberg a leaked climate report from the IPPC speaks of "Irreversible Damage." The warnings in the report are, as such, not new but the tone of voice is more urgent and more direct than ever. It states among other things that global warming already is affecting "all continents and across the oceans," and that "risks from mitigation can be substantial, but they do not involve the same possibility of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts as risks from climate change, increasing the benefits from near-term mitigation action."

Are you telling me that spewing into the atmosphere millions of years of accumulated sunlight and cutting down most of the natural CO2 scrubers (trees) of the world will have negative effects? Nah! Imposible!

Are you telling me that spewing into the atmosphere millions of years of accumulated sunlight and cutting down most of the natural CO2 scrubers (trees) of the world will have negative effects?

1. Trees do nothing2. Human emissions are not even stable, they are continuing to increase. 60 million barrels of oil went up in smoke 10 years ago. Today, almost 50% MORE, 90 million barrels a day. Coal, increasing too. Gas usage, increasing.

Confused people will start talking about things like "cow farts" or "trees" or similar. These have nothing to do with global warming - the climate thing - because these do not represent sequestered carbon. These are all carbon cycle stuff. Sequestered carbon being ADDE

Confused people will start talking about things like "cow farts" or "trees" or similar. These have nothing to do with global warming - the climate thing - because these do not represent sequestered carbon.

Not quite right. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So, taking existing atmospheric carbon in the form of CO2 and turning it into methane will increase warming.

Yes, in the beginning there was carbon and water. Then, the water was split into hydrogen and oxygen which oxidized the carbon into carbon dioxide and left a lot of hydrogen gas drifting around. Then life spontaneously arose and converted the carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons aka "stored sunlight." Then more new life spontaneously arose which could metabolize the stored sunlight (aka food) into carbon dioxide and now here we are busily turning/burning the stored sunlight back into carbon dioxide. Now, a

When I was in graduate school, that was the first time that scientists came to grips with the fact that half of the missing carbon is going into the land. The reason that was a surprise is that it is not enough just to have photosynthesis taking CO2 out of the air, what we are saying is the growth of new plants is more than the death of old plants. Things are growing faster than they are dying–and this is across the world, which was really a surprise.

We already are doing something about climate change! The price of solar is plummeting and some are suggesting that it will be a disruptive technology on the same order as the internet:

the tipping point will arrive around 2020. At that point, investing in a home solar system with a 20-year life span, plus some small-scale home battery technology and an electric car, will pay for itself in six to eight years for the average consumer in Germany, Italy, Spain, and much of the rest of Europe. Crucially, this

That would actually be illogical for an individual to do if they're mostly interested in themselves and their offspring (and people do it which shows how generous some people are, sacrificing themselves for the greater good). A single person giving up 1/8 of their income for the benefit of everyone instead of themselves is just putting themselves at an economic disadvantage. Those are resources that can't be put towards better education for their kids, buying bigger/newer (i.e. safer for themselves) vehicles, etc. This kind of stuff will only work if we agree as a society that everyone has to play along by the new rules, for the benefit of everyone as a whole. A lot of people are completely against this idea (government intrusion on freedom, etc.) but that's the only way we've ever solved problems based on the "tragedy of the commons". If there's a common resource that people have an incentive to exploit, with no limit, for essentially free (e.g. the atmosphere) then they will do it. Sure, we all breath, but there's little/no incentive to breath "more". We can, however, use more energy by burning inexpensive fuel which consumes O2 and releases CO2 into the atmosphere, and we don't, as individuals or as companies, have to pay for that "externality". Therefore we will *never* stop doing it until we all agree as a society to regulate CO2 emissions.

One can't make that kind of choice unilaterally when competing against others. The companies can't either.

Even if their founders have initially good intentions those good intentions will, when there are externalities, ultimately harm their business. This applies to everything from worker welfare or unsafe factories to harm to the environment.

Have politicians give up their salaries to pay for carbon credits. Have progressives pay for the legions of illegals on the welfare doles now. Have conservatives pay for abortion clinics for militant atheists. Have everyone pay for the continued corporate welfare cycle that's not in the Constitution.

The UN panel since September has published three separate reports into the physical science of global warming, its impacts, and ways to fight it. The study leaked yesterday, called the “Synthesis Report” intends to pick out the most important findings and present them in a way that lawmakers can easily understand. (Emphasis mine)

Why do I have a feeling the report to the politicians will have to read a lot like the Simple English Wikipedia, to the point where it might not be a bad idea to get the writers for that on it.

"Global warming is a bad thing that causes lots of problems. Burning stuff causes global warming. If you keep burning stuff, you will have a bad problem."

Thats not the problem though. They understand english and know how to look up big words. The problem is that they receive campaign donations from people who have an interest in keeping the status quo. If lawmakers were to pass bills that would attempt to counter global warming on a large scale, these same businesses would have a huge hit to their bottom line. The stupidity of the situation is if we made changes little by little when people started to raise alarms about global warming, we probably could have

--- “Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”

"Possible permanent changes include the melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland. That would boost sea levels by as much as 7 meters (23 feet) and threaten coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok along with island nations such as the Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

The scientists said they have “medium confidence” that warming of less than 4 degrees Celsius would be enough to trigger such a melt, which would take at least a millennium.

"Irreversible" is a very strong word, and clearly incorrect. We're not so much talking about unscrambling eggs here as something than *can* be corrected, and in all likelihood *will* be corrected, just by leaving it alone and waiting long enough. The problem for us humans here today, of course, is that we won't we around that long and in all probability neither will many generations of our decendants. I fully expect the naysayers to latch on to this in combination with the historical record showing that

That's besides the point. If we act now, we have a chance at fixing it that's fairly large and wouldn't cause that many problems. If we act much later, we have fewer chances of succeeding and even success would probably mean that people (how many? thousands? millions?) have died for nothing. Saying that we can always recover is incredibly selfish, even if it's true (and frankly it's more of a gamble than I'd like).

Quoting a work of fiction doesn't make your point unless your point applies only within that world.

Unless, of course, you think we can solve global warming by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow (or perhaps Gandalf can just not let any IR photons pass, if you prefer fantasy solutions over scifi ones).

I have a slightly different take on it. Using absolutes like "irreversible" or "unavoidable" is dangerous is because it decreases public support for what you're trying to accomplish. People will think, "well if we can't do anything about it, then I guess there's nothing left to do but live it up in the time we have left."

I just hope global warming increases to the point where it can self-pop the popcorn I like to eat when these histrionic sorts of things come out. All the sound and fury, so little actually accomplished! Whee!

It's also likely that global warming might deliver pre-melted butter for the popcorn. Damn, what's wrong with this again?

Don't worry. Seriously, some very rich people who made a fortune selling gas and coal have assured us that these climate change alarmists are just a bunch of melodramatic liars. There's nothing to worry about.

Yes, rapacious capitalism tends mostly to believe in whatever lines their pockets at the moment.

Your mention of ethanol is a great example. Ethanol on the whole is a big loser both in therms of wasting food, wasting tax dollars subsidizing it, not reducing carbon emissions, and greatly using up public will with a massive sideshow. Monsanto loves it, as do lots of industrial farmers (there are no family farmers left of consequence, just in campaign ads).

If our government was not already captured by the current lot, we could use laws to adjust incentives to get these rapacious capitalists to cause less harm by letting them fight over dollars in solar rather than oil. Sadly, changing the status quo scares the hell out of the current set of rapacious capitalists, so they spend part of their massive profit to manipulate the system to keep their cash cow protected. We as voters have been gerrymandered into being mostly irrelevant, so we cannot do much anymore. Weak minded kumbaya green folks are their own worst enemies, expecting that hugs and good will toward mankind will magically solve the problem (and they SUCK at math).

here is the kicker, anyone with an IQ over 100 and not lazy can make their own wind generators. In fact if you are not completely inept you can easily generate all the electricity you need with low cost parts that are available. All of the knowlege you need is right in front of you, you just have to take the time to search for it and read it.

Drilling for oil, then refining it yourself with todays available devices and parts is significantly harder than a solar,wind and battery installation.

At least get the acronym for the name of the organization predicting doom right. And...there's no hurry for action. The climate is currently taking a 'hiatus' from warming due to the alleged storage of heat in the deep ocean. Forecasts for the upcoming winter are...cold.

Seriously why to people do water intensive farming in a desert in an effort to preserve their water rights? I am not all that sympathetic to farmers and ranchers that through our governments subsidy rules and their use it or lose it water rights are having a hard time in what normally is a desert. Guess what you live in a desert and if you can't get the water to grow your alfalfa, lettuce, grape, etc crops maybe you should be trying to grow those things there.

I don't think the worry with climate change was ever that we'd destroy Earth. It's just that it's in our best interests to avoid a certain species of apes from going extinct. Even that is unlikely, but I'm not sure you'd enjoy the possibility of millions or billions of people dying to an extinction-level event. Who's to say you'd be among the survivors, or your children?

The "irreversible" part is talking about Ice Sheets that can't reform unless we have another ice age. Even if we got the average yearly global temperature back down to pre-industrial levels the ice sheet won't reform because the winter snow would be falling at a lower altitude where it will melt in the summer. So either we get this climate change situation under control in a hurry, or we start building a whole lot of seawalls around our coastal cities and just learn to deal with flooding.

China makes everything, for everybody. We pay them to do this, part of the reason everybody pays them is because they are willing and we are not. Since we are not immediately and directly impacted by CO2...plus it is invisible... we are simply too shallow to realize it harms us indirectly. Just as people shop at Walmart and wonder why their jobs disappeared (forcing them to shop at Walmart more.)

“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft.

It was kind of going that way anyhow though, either to a tropical earth or back towards a new ice age. And really given the choice the tropical option is less destrcutive. As I understand it we were in an interglacial until people started digging up sequestered carbon and injecting it into the atmosphere. Either way I don't believe it will be possible to stabilise the climate over the mid to long term, at least not with our current technology, so maybe its best just to prepare to adapt to these changes.

Well, we could still work to try to lessen/minimize the damage and instability.

Like, if you had gangrene on your arm, and the doctor announces, "I'm sorry, but we can't save the arm, the damage is irreversible," you wouldn't go, "Ah, well. It's impossible to save the arm. Time to wait it out and adapt."

At least, I'd hope you wouldn't. That's when you have an operation, try to save as much of your arm as you can. And then you think about what caused the gangrene in the first place, and try to not do th

All I see is "the world is ending!" without any realistic measurements provided. Show me what it's going to cost at each point, and when. The simplest, lowest cost adaptation is simply to build above future sea levels. The lowest cost food change is crop switching and genetic manipulation. The simplest - and probably only - long term solution is reducing population numbers.

Those are a lot of conclusions to draw when you openly admit that you have insufficient measurements and cost estimates.

There are plenty of "no regrets" policies, that should be done regardless of global warming. We should reduce our fuel consumption and dependence on imported oil for reasons of economics and national security. Third world countries should reduce population growth through education and better access to contraception, because that is their path out of poverty.

The Stern report assumes that how we do things doesn't change, which is fundamentally incorrect. We constantly change. fivethirtyeight.com has had a few backwards-looking comprehensive stat reports that show we do adapt and that this type of report is bogus.

Climate change is happening and will continue to happen. Society isn't going to abandon oil so researchers need to quit having that fantasy. What are REAL ways that society will agree to change? The simplest is to quit building below anticipated sea levels (probably by adjusting insurance rates... put a cap of CPI-U+5% yearly increase to make it politically palatable). Focus on that - it's an area of society and economics that has a decent chance of actually being changed.

You're condemning my entire country to oblivion! Are you seriously suggesting the billions of people on this planet who live on the coast move somewhere else? Good luck with that. That's a bare minimum of three wars or so.

Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt.With are current Greenhouse gas release, there isn't an endpoint survivable by humans. It will get two warm for food growth, anywhere.People act like, well it will happen and we will just farm 200 miles more north.

1. Average planetary temperature now is about 12C. Average temperature for most of the past billion years or so is 22C2. Average CO2 concentration today is EXTREME geological LOW. It's been as high as > 7000ppm3. There's pretty much ZERO correlation between CO2 and temperature.

Note well that if temperatures go up 2C, we've still got 8C to go before the planet reaches its "norma

1. Average planetary temperature now is about 12C. Average temperature for most of the past billion years or so is 22C2. Average CO2 concentration today is EXTREME geological LOW. It's been as high as > 7000ppm3. There's pretty much ZERO correlation between CO2 and temperature.

Note well that if temperatures go up 2C, we've still got 8C to go before the planet reaches its "normal" average temperature.

Ok, I'll accept that... of course the first mammals appeared on the planet around say 225million years ago, and were the size of perhaps a mouse or smaller. Larger mammals have been found around 100million years ago, around the size of a large rat perhaps... it wasn't until say 55million years ago the earliest ancestor for man/primates appeared, Archicebus, which would fit in the palm of your hand and weigh maybe an ounce.

So maybe instead of the past "billion years" we should focus on say the past 50million, where temperatures and CO2 levels were at a level where a mammal like mankind could survive on most of the planet? Seems rather pointless to say the planet has been "22C average" when at the time it was mankind didn't exist, and more than likely with a 10C increase over current temperatures it's unlikely human beings could survive in many areas (a 100F desert will kill in a day or two w/o water - imagine 120-130F?).

I mean, unless you're worried about ants, cockroaches, and mammals the size of mice, and shrews, it might be wiser to focus on temperatures that human beings can and have survived in, and not some 'average' that includes numbers from many (up to 950million) years before anything even remotely human-like existed. Because, yes, "life" existed at 7000ppm and 22C - but not human life.

Certainly not. The panel would be disbanded, if Climate Change turned out to be a hoax so all members are interested in maintaining the fear. The fear may still be justified, but the glaring conflict of interest disqualifies their reports as evidence.

I would not trust them any more, than I would trust an "anti-poverty" politician to eliminate poverty — what is he going to run on come next elections?

Then how about Koch funded 0.01% papers?

You had the opportunity to offer a link, but chose not to... Is it because you don't have one.

Your source does not say that IPCC members are not scientists, as that would be an obvious lie.

A person may remain an academic and retain various titles, but he stops being a scientist when his research is done not to advance knowledge, but to confirm an already held conviction. Perhaps, you did not read to this text:

A panel of climate experts are telling the House Science Committee that politics often gets in the way of good science at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as in the U.S. government’s own climate research.

Climate scientists and researchers who dissent even slightly from the talking points of politicians and environmental groups are intimidated and ostracized, said one congressional witness. Politics, the witness said, takes a lead role over science in the study of global warming.

Yes, we should prepare, but we can not adapt.
With are current Greenhouse gas release, there isn't an endpoint survivable by humans. It will get two warm for food growth, anywhere.
People act like, well it will happen and we will just farm 200 miles more north.

Hogwash. Even in the IPCC A1FI scenario, the most pessimistic case presented, total global warming by 2100 is 1.4C to 6.4C. Yes, that would have significant bad effects but it's not going to mean the end of agriculture across the entire planet. Earth isn't going to turn into Venus. The average temp at the equator now is 30C while in Siberia it's only 0.5C. So, if we look at the average high temperature for Novosibirsk during the hottest month of July (25.7) and add the high end of the worst case scenario (6.4C) then we only get 32.1C, so yeah moving north will be an option. I'd expect massive droughts in the equatorial zones, the collapse of many third world governments and a huge refugee crisis but that's not the same as saying it's unsurvivable by humans as a species.

Why? Equatorial zones have a great deal of ocean water, which certainly isn't going to change. That water will evaporate faster, the atmosphere will contain more humidity, and therefore there will be more precipitation, if the average temperature is up a few degrees C. How does that constitute the precursors for anticipating equatorial droughts?

I can see marginal areas (US midwest, for instance) baking off the little bit of moisture they have and not reac

You *do* realize that the equatorial zone is generally tropical, wet as heck, and quite a bit warmer than everywhere else, yes? And that plants thrive on CO2?

Doesn't follow that making it warmer will make it drier. That doesn't seem to be how it works. Drier happens when water sources go away. There's no reasonable postulate for that which would apply to most equatorial regions.

Good for nature, bad for man. Just like O2 Poisoning the planet when it was overrun by Plant life. Life adapts. Humans haven't always been around, and won't be around forever. Because we are aware of our own demise doesn't change these facts.

We don't have foreknowledge of shit. It's a pretty epic level of arrogance to think we've suddenly acquired the ability to accurately see 100 years into the future when EVERY SINGLE ATTEMPT in the past to accurately predict anything even 20 years in the future has failed MISERABLY and has been LAUGHABLY wrong.

The only thing that I predict about what this planet is going to look like 100 years from now is that it's going to be nothing like what anyone expects today.

“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft.

Oh great. "The sky is gonna fall! Almost 100 years from now!!! Disaster is looming!!!!"

I am fine being remembered for pointing out yet again we will be better off in 100, 200 or 300 years keeping the economy strong and forging ahead with technological advancement than slowing it by draconian clamps on the economy (there are many clamps beside environmental remediation).

100 years ago we barely had simple planes and no antibiotics. Horses were still common in the streets. Had they slowed down their growth to "help" us, well, thanks for nuthin', Gentleman Jim.

Do you really have so little concept as to the scale of human damage? A single average-sized car puts out 4.75 metric TONS of carbon every year (and about 2-3 years worth during its construction and a little bit more during its destruction.) At last check there were more cars in the use being operated than there are drivers... and that's just one country... whilst this amount is being dwarfed by carbon emissions tied up in industrial agriculture (local/natural agriculture trends toward carbon neutral to n

Lets assume you're talking about tons of CO2 rather than tons of carbon.Apparently we multiply litres of petrol by 2.331 to get Kg of CO2 emitted: http://www.carbontrust.com/res... [carbontrust.com]So 4750/2.331 = 2038 litres. At 5l / 100Km, this gives us 2038*100/5 = 40760Km - ok, a vaguely more reasonable figure.

So the average is going to be well under 41Mm and around an order of magnitude less than the 152Mm you claimed!

I'm certainly not saying that climate change is nothing to worry about - I think it's a big problem and whether or not you think it's man made, dumping vast amounts of crap into the atmosphere can't possibly be a bright idea. But I really wish people wouldn't just invent bogus "facts" to back up their arguments - the arguments should stand up for themselves, if you need bogus data to prop them up then you've got something really badly wrong somewhere.

Gasoline contains various different organic molecules starting from hexane and running up through decane. Hexane is C6H14, so the carbon makes up 84% of the mass. Octane is C8H18, so the carbon makes up 80% of the mass. Call it 82%.

A single average-sized car emits 1800 kg of carbon every year. Less than 2 metric tons.

How your comment got modded Insightful is a mystery. You don't give any arguments, you just postulate.

Humans can't even make it rain or change the weather locally

Really? Just one example: the notorious London smog. Most major cities used to be covered in the filthy stuff until burning coal in cities was largely banned; does that not qualify as weather? It certainly changed the atmosphere in large, local areas.

Anyone who thinks they can affect the whole world this much is a moron or shill for some environmental group

Hmm, right. Another example: man-made plastic pollution is now found everywhere - with the possible exception of Antarctica. You find it everywhere, even in th

So what's your research? What data did you take to make this conclusion? What are your hypotheses and theories regarding the current warming trend? Oh wait, you're just knee-jerking because you think we can't possibly have done it.

We can't make it rain? You've not heard of cloud seeding [wikipedia.org], have you? No, we don't have the power to control the weather locally, because that involves some truly massive amounts of energy. Thing is, on a global scale, humanity throws out truly massive amounts of energy. How much?

I love the way it's claimed to have been "leaked", as though the IPCC would sit on this. Perhaps they think making it officially a 'leak' will make people think they were going to cover it up, to trick people into thinking that "something must be done, right now!"

You know, honestly, the piles of mindless hate you get for a relatively benign opinion and posting news stories in support of that benign opinion tends to make me more, and not less, sympathetic to your positions.

You'll have to do better than that. The raw data does not show this, unless like the Levitus paper you're willing to draw conclusions from localized data and ignore the rest of the world. Which, it must be said, is a technique warmists are rather famous for. It's a form of lying. Like saying the current drought in California is "climate".